PamelaMaeSnap

Quick(fire) question: Have they always brought back LCK winner to join a final 4 to make a final 5? I thought for some reason it had always been down to Final 3 and LCK created a Final 4.

Honestly, overall, I think Claudette is the only chefster I really disliked this season. I know some folks are on Snidely Joe but I actually like him, partly because he reminds me SO much of a dear friend and partly because I think I'd love his food and overall he seems like he'd be a cool guy to hang out with. (FWIW, the friend also had one of those Snidely waxed mustaches which somehow just worked really well for him without looking pretentious or douchey so that may be the weird affection I have for it).

That was all I caught as well ... I think Fati is a lock for this because of her sheer likability combined with her story, and I'd have no quibble with that, but that said I just threw all 40 of my votes to Chris because he is my Top Chef Boyfriend this season and I want that lemonade fried chicken recipe!

An almost-60-something end-of-the-baby-boomer here ... I could be wrong but I grew up in New York City and spent a lot of time shopping for vintage and also in the then-"funky" little stores in the Village and I have a recollection of Betty Boop et all having a retro-comeback period ... I want to say somewhere around mid-70s maybe as late as early 80s? It would have been when I was choosing my own fashions (usually poorly), lots of T-shirts and retro/cute stuff (or so I thought) but before I got married (so that places it between 1975-1983). Lots of Mickey Mouse, Betty Boop, other cartoon characters either jazzed up with sequins or occasionally kinda dirty (Ricky Rat, etc.).

You mean there are other Greek foods aside from gyros and flaming cheese (aka saganaki)? Who knew? That's all I eat. :) LOL ... we actually are doing the Top Chef trifecta here in DC at the newly-foodiefied Wharf for our "big three" occasions ... went to Mike Isabella's Requin this past weekend for an early Valentine's Day dinner (it was FANTASTIC ... seriously one of the best meals I've ever had), going to Fabio's Del Mar for hubby's birthday in three weeks and then to Kith and Kin (my choice because I adore Kwame) for our anniversary in April. THANK YOU for those suggestions ... hubby has an overly strong detestation for Graham Elliott (I'm not sure why ... I can take him or leave him ... maybe it's the glasses). I do love the idea of just bar hopping on restaurant row in theory, but given that I'll have been up since 3 a.m., my bedtime will probably be by 10, so they can just pack me into a cab and send me off to the Sofitel.

I THOUGHT he meant that his goal was to be able to fit both legs into one leg of the pants he's wearing now ... ETA: My bad, others confirmed this before I got to the bottom of the posts! I am a little concerned about Naomi and her boyfriend. I get the feeling he's just maybe not comfortable with being part of the show (you can tell he loves her and is incredibly supportive and loved her when she was heavier as well ... perhaps he just didn't know what he was signing up for ... and I remember how embarrassed he was when she started talking about their sex life on TV). Also, I caught in passing (I don't know if this was the first time it was used?) that Chitoka's nickname is "Tick-Tock" and I think that is absolutely adorable. I do love this show because I love this family. They may be the single most well-adjusted and loving family on reality TV, period. I want them to adopt me! I'll cook nice unfattening food ... oh, who am I kidding I can't cook. But I'll let them share all the Lean Cuisines in my freezer!

I thought her boyfriend was more embarrassed than anyone ... I confess I am worried that this show may create a rift between them ... I wonder if he knew what he was signing up for with the show. He obviously loves (hope it's still present tense) Naomi no matter what size she is and is supportive but some people just don't want their private lives on TV.

Thank you for that recommendation! I've spent basically zero time in Chicago in my life (and the few times I've been there I've either been at Wrigley or whatever they're calling the White Sox stadium this week) ... hubs went to Northwestern, though, so wants to spend Friday night hitting a lot of blues clubs and stuff ... I'm just going to have to bite my tongue and let him and his friends decide where we're eating, where we're drinking, where we're clubbing etc. (all this after taking a 7 a.m. flight that morning, so off a 3 a.m. wake-up call ... am I a terrible person to hope there's a Noreaster the day before and we get snowed in back east? I would love to come to do a gustatorial tour of Chicago ... in, like, May!) He has said, though, that the food in the Greek neighborhood is AWESOME and that is something that we don't have much of here in DC (and is one of my favorites), plus friend's wife is Greek so she might be down for that ... any recommendations on great Greek???? I'd be VERY grateful since I'm sure the places he loved in college are long gone.

He made himself some sort of black bean soup and I combined two different frozen Lean Cuisines LOL. I am SO not a candidate for Top Chef. Maybe America's Worst Home Cooks.

A few random Top Chef thoughts to start the day ... BUT they are also (after the first one) specific to this thread so hopefully mod will bear with me? Otherwise, if it is too chef-centric as opposed to episode-centric please let me know where to move it. YAY CHRIS YAY IGGLES. I didn't watch anything but the fumble/recovery right before the two-minute mark but hope that Chris is still celebrating. Did anyone who watched this see any shots of him on celebrity row or anything? BABYGATE: I'll play devil's advocate for Bruce on this. He is so clearly an emotionally-attached family man that I can't imagine this wasn't something his wife was completely behind him on all the way ... it wouldn't surprise me if he's had more than one off-camera "phone calls home of doom" saying he wants to quit and come home and her telling him not to. The money from winning would certainly help, not to mention the further he goes, the more exposure, etc. She may well have a parent or friend there helping out (hopefully not too many ... our rag-tag and decidedly UNHELPFUL army of parents and step-parents that descended on our house from out of town like locusts in the two weeks after our baby was born was by far the low-light of that entire period and that includes being attached to a milk-pumping-machine for 23 hours a day and having to rush the baby BACK to the hospital for a (non-insured this time) stay for jaundice. I was actively surprised by Padma's snide "pasta again?" ... they know if something is someone's "thing" when they add them to the chef lineup mix. That is his thing and he's obviously really good at it. Even if it meant playing it safe, in a pressure situation, why not play up what you're good at? Fati had MOST of the time been finding a way to add some of her culture and heritage to her dishes and Padma never said "Oh, you're doing Pakistani AGAIN?" I could not stand Carrie at the beginning though I couldn't put my finger on why (and it's still driving me crazy what actress she looks like if she's never been on another cooking show because she looks SO familiar) but she's starting to grow on me ... I do wonder how much (if any, if I'm being conspiracy theorist) being familiar with what Colorado altitude does to food gives her an advantage. But this episode pretty much confirmed our theory that she goes all ... the ... way at east to the bitter end. I keep forgetting Adrienne's even there. What did she make again? I also noticed IMMEDIATELY (and thought that maybe they do this all the time in later stages of the show, say, when they get down to about six people) that instead of having a first place team, a safe team and a bottom team, they went right to the four-person elimination ... tie this in with the way they played fast and loose with the elimination week with Tanya, and I think it's obvious that they simply tweak the rules to fit their own decisions re: who they want to get rid of, if they can't facilitate their master plan without producer manipulation. Re: Snidely, I agree with a poster above (can't remember who but I "hearted" the post) who basically said there is no such thing as bad mac and cheese. I wonder with Fati if her dish had been more obviously and visually "orange and blue" like she'd planned (those blue chips did not look blue and I didn't see any orange) she might have slid through for sheer creativity. Instead it was just a not-great taco. PLAY ALONG AT HOME FOLKS: Our Quickfire Elimination challenge for the day: On a morning you were going to do the groceries because the cupboard/fridge is pretty damned bare, your entire driveway and street is iced over to the point of actually leaving the house in a car being a non-negotiable option, the temps are supposed to top out at 25, and we're the last street in our community to ever get salted/shoveled/plowed (and I've already been at it with manager of said community and this is the third time we've been unable to leave the house but the most dangerous -- the other two times it was just several inches of snow on ice on snow). Challenge: Use whatever you can find in the fridge and cabinets to figure out what to make for dinner tonight. Hubby is ON this.

Thanks, Surrysmum ... will check them out ... it's possible that the last four (which were more boring LOL as she became so glam) were either unavailable at the time or really pricey! I'll check this link!

A) Lilyan still looks like Fred Armisen. Now more than ever ... BUT .. . B) Why was in that in every talking head, even after the hairgate, Lilyan was BLOND? Again? Still? (Plus, she's wearing those blue-gray contacts again/still) ... Her hair looks EXACTLY like it does in every single other talking head we've seen all season but less brassy dry and crappy and more wavy and pretty and a little more buttery than bleached which leads me to believe that ... C) ALL of the talking heads were done after the show finished filming, so so much for spontaneity since they already know everything that came down, and that she re-dyed her hair blonde as soon as she could. And ... speaking of blonde ... D) Is it just me or is Carrington really not all that to start with ... she looks rode hard and put away wet (even for 19, which apparently she is, rather than 16 which is what they SAY she is ... I wonder if her real age will be outed during this show for another shocking shocker of a shock ... BUT THAT SAID, she ALSO has dark roots so I bet in real life she's as blonde as Lilyanfred is. They couldn't get, you know, a nice cornfed pretty blonde from somewhere in bumfuck who wants to be a model? And I have sneaky suspicion HER mom is gonna be one piece of work though we haven't seen her say much yet. I don't have a whole lot of respect for people who model themselves as YouTube stars ... it's one step shy of being a professional "social influencer."

The baby is ADORABLE (I also thought from the newborn pix he may be black) and am still convinced that Bruce is a Beatles fan with the name Jude Paul ... I am so glad that Bruce is home and happy and being, no doubt a fabulous father. I realize we were really near his restaurant not long ago (looking at an apartment on Union in Pasadena) but don't know if we'll get back there ... well, if he sticks around, we'll be in SoCal soon enough I'm sure some Pasadena dinners will be on the agenda. LAMB18, if you see Chris while you're working SUPER BOWL please give him a huge bear hug from me LOL (I know you can't, but I can dream) or at least let him know how many snarky people he has rooting for him here! I do love the nicknames. Snidely Joe may be my favorite. And the crystals! I would not have had him pegged for being a sensitive new-age guy (credit to Christine Lavin for that).

As a sportswriter who does not really love football (I'm 99% baseball and the other 1% the Wizards when they don't suck), but does love tailgate/Super Bowl party food, I was ecstatic that Chris won the tickets because of his love for the Iggles ... maybe even enough for me to watch and root for them (oh, who am I kidding? I hate Brady so much I'll do what I usually do and go see a movie or something in an empty theater). But seriously, I WAS very excited for Chris! I was sad to see Fati bounced over Mustache Joe in this situation ... I really adore her ... and now am just trying to send whatever healing vibes I can to her. Having trying to stay unspoiled but having seen a photo of her (with Bruce and Tyler, I think) after her surgery, I don't know if it's just my imagination that she looks tired and run down or she really was just fighting so hard to get through this. Kinda wish she could have the same "you can come back when you're healthy and do it again" pass that Lee Ann got ... certainly won't be surprised and would be thrilled to see her return on a future All-Stars, which seem to come about every third cycle anyway. Also, we're heading to Chicago for a wedding in March (which is killing me because it means I can't go to an Expos event in Montreal I really wanted to attend) so hoping I can get hubs and his friend to make reservations at Joe Flamm's place. (Without getting into gory details, the last time we went to a Top Chef-related restaurant, a few weeks ago, we'd made reservations several weeks in advance and it was our last night on a big vacation and we were all excited ... but I had eaten a bad clam earlier that day ... let's just say that I was able to eat ONE STRAND of pasta and spent the rest of the time feeling incredibly glaringly awkward walking across the HUGE dining room EIGHT TIMES during dinner. Sad face. Though the rest of my dining party rated the meal next to last on our week's worth of dinners so maybe I didn't miss that much ... )

A slight necrobump because you are so my comfort book twin! Yes, LOVED Betsy Was A Junior in a close second to Betsy In Spite Of Herself (the latter probably because as a teen I was always convinced that a self-makeover would be the solution to all my social problems and I tried to do one every six months or so but they never took because I was just weird me). And someone else who had read The Cheerleader!!!! I've never heard of Beany Malone but it sounds like I need to try to find those on Amazon or Kindle now ... Also, one book I've reread so many times though it's not a "kid/teen" book is Marge Piercy's "Gone To Soldiers," a wonderful novel that takes place during WWII and follows several different characters in different places around the world. Finally one more "kid/teen" series I loved and think I was inspired by this thread to try to find ... found the first four of the eight books, the latter four I believe being out of print and unfindable ... the Peggy Lane series (did I mention it in another thread maybe?) ... like the Sue Barton and Cherry Ames student nurse books, these were about an aspiring actress in the big city.

Or ... and I hate to say this but it's what I keep thinking when I see him in that outfit ... Tweedledee.

I don't know how I missed that they now had a follow-up series to this show ... I find First 48 fascinating (and sort of feel like I'm getting to know some of the cops and detectives because they do so often go to the same cities) ... I'm basically addicted to ID channel stuff etc. ... always been a true crime fan (I ordered the entire Time Life 20-volume encyclopedia of Crime and Punishment when I was about 10 ... can't believe my parents didn't kill me. But I still have it almost 50 years later). I'll add this to my recording list now. ETA: And now looking at the dates of these posts I realize WHY I didn't know there was a new show LOL ... never mind (Emily Litella voice). I guess all the Investigation Discovery and FIrst 48s etc. are starting to run together.

TOTALLY with you there ... after finally watching this first episode (since the 600-Lb Life PTVers commented on how much more likable this family is, and they're right!), I've gotten accustomed to the weight loss requirements and, I guess, minimum weight one had to be for Dr. Now to put them on TV--I mean, schedule them for surgery. I was actually afraid that Naomi would NOT BE ALLOWED to have the surgery because she wasn't big enough ... I feel like Dr. Now would have said "You have to GAIN 100 pounds before I can operate on you." And Naomi is GORGEOUS!!!! (Especially when she doesn't straighten her hair -- I LOVE her natural hair!!!). I'm glad she seems to have a nice supportive (and may I add also gorgeous) boyfriend. I'm really rooting for Drew ... I can't remember the last time we've seen those "younger day" photos of someone this big who was still really thin as late as college (and not only thin but SO handsome!) ... I don't know enough about weight gain/loss to THIS degree to be able to put my finger on it, but his body type seems to odd that coupled with the weigh gain, I do wonder if there is some sort of hormonal or chemical imbalance or something. ... as someone mentioned, and maybe the beard hides it, his face seems normal and even his arms seem normal (certainly compared to many people on these shows whose arms are huge, such as Chitoka). Whatever the case he seems kind and very cool ... He doesn't whine ... He takes care of others and seems surprisingly mobile ... I'd lay off the yellow and blue outfit though ... the black clothes are more flattering ...

I love you ... I was literally going to post the exact same thing! ETA And I THINK this is okay here since there doesn't seem to be a spoiler thread per se ... wasn't it already discussed that the girl they're adding as the sixth girl, who they said was 16 during the convo, is in fact 19? There can't have been THAT much time that's elapsed since they taped this, can there?

Please tell me they're not going to kill off Bailey ...

THAT would be my trip ... but I'd stay back when everyone went to the Grand Canyon to see if I could find the secret pizza at the Cosmopolitan or play some black jack.

I'm also wondering if TLC is footing the bill for all of this travel and thus they have a lot more say in how/where the family vacations are spent ... The family seems to be comfortable financially (the house is beautiful) but I have to also assume that the medical bills over the years (and just the cost of raising four kids) would be pretty prohibitive ... I am a newcomer to the series (would see it crossplugged in the other TLC shows I've been watching and it looked intriguing) and watched all of S1 to familiarize myself with the family and the story and shamefacedly confess I skipped over S2 and S3 so I could get right to the current season (I'll probably go back and rewatch some of the middle seasons ... like, why is grandpa no longer in the talking heads?) but even taking into account inevitable producer manipulation, I am really liking it because I think it addresses interesting and unique issues and I personally find ALL of the individuals involved (family and friends) likable ... I do feel for the siblings if they feel they've been ignored (and wonder if that's something that's been more of an issue since the family became a TLC commodity) but I love the brothers and think they're hilarious and clearly love and support their sister ... I'm guessing all three (Sander, Griffen AND Ari?) are at UFlorida since they referenced Gainesville. Also, IMHO, a family vacation JUST to go to the Grand Canyon is kind of overrated ... (who said it's just a bunch of rocks?) ... It's awesome for like maybe a few hours. Not for a week, unless you're a family that loves all that camping and hiking stuff and I get the feeling maybe that's not a unanimous favorite activity for all of them ... now, adding a Grand Canyon side trip in while they hit, say, southern California and maybe Mexico, then you have a family vacation.

Yes ... or, possibly (and I may already be confused) they already knew they wanted the PYKAG to be between Claudette and Tanya and the only way to get that result was to have the team in the bottom, so they downvoted Chris as a result to be safe. Oh, also ... re: Bruce's baby ... soooo cute and with the name Jude Paul, I wonder if he's a Beatles fan much? ETA: Ugh ... I CANNOT figure out how to attach this to my previous posts. Please don't hate me, mods!

I actually DID notice the disclaimer but assumed that maybe it was something that was always there and I'd just never seen it before ... thank you for sharing this!

I had TOTALLY forgotten that story line ... definitely time for me and my transient-global-amnesia-altered brain to rewatch all 15 seasons again.